ON TACTICS AGAINST JAPANESE IMPERIALISM

December 27, 1935

[This report was given by Comrade Mao Tse-tung at the conference of Party
activists which was held at Wayaopao, northern Shensi, after the Wayaopao
meeting of the Political Bureau of the Central Committee in December 1935.
This meeting, one of the most important ever called by the Central Committee
of the Communist Party of China, criticized the mistaken view in the Party
that the Chinese national bourgeoisie could not be an ally of the workers
and peasants in the common fight against Japan, and it decided on the tactics
of a national united front. On the basis of the Political Bureau's decisions,
Comrade Mao Tse-tung explained in detail the possibility and the importance
of re-establishing a united front with the national bourgeoisie on the condition
that there must be resistance to Japan. He stressed the decisive significance
of the leading role to be played by the Communist Party and the Red Army
in this united front. He pointed out the protracted character of the Chinese
revolution, and criticized the narrow-minded closed-doorism and overhastiness
with regard to the revolution which had long existed in the Party and which
were the basic cause of the serious setbacks of the Party and the Red Army
during the Second Revolutionary Civil War. At the same time, he called the
Party's attention to the historical lesson of the defeat of the revolution
in 1927 which had been caused by Chen Tu-hsiu's Right opportunism, and he
showed that Chiang Kai-shek would inevitably try to undermine the forces
of the revolution. Thus he enabled the Party to remain clear-headed in the
new situation and to save the forces of the revolution from losses, in spite
of Chiang Kai-shek's endless intrigues and many armed attacks. In January
1935, at an enlarged meeting of the Political Bureau of the Central Committee
which was convened in Tsunyi, Kweichow Province, a new Central Committee
leadership headed by Comrade Mao Tse-tung had been established in place of
the former "Left" opportunist leadership. However, as that meeting took place
during the Red Army's Long March, it had to confine itself to decisions on
the most urgent military problems and on the organization of the Secretariat
and the Revolutionary Military Commission of the Central Committee. Only
when the Red Army had reached northern Shensi after the Long March was it
possible for the Central Committee of the Party to deal systematically with
the various problems of tactics in the political sphere. A most comprehensive
analysis of these problems is given in this report by Comrade Mao Tse-tung.]

Comrades! A great change has now taken place in the political situation.
Our Party has defined its tasks in the light of this changed situation.

What is the present situation?

Its main characteristic is that Japanese imperialism wants to turn China
into a colony.

As we all know, for nearly a hundred years China has been a semi-colonial
country jointly dominated by several imperialist powers. Owing to the Chinese
people's struggle against imperialism and to conflicts among the imperialist
powers, China has been able to retain a semi-independent status. For a time
World War I gave Japanese imperialism the opportunity of dominating China
exclusively. But the treaty surrendering China to Japan, the Twenty-one Demands
[1] signed by Yuan Shih-kai, [2] the
arch-traitor of that time, was inevitably rendered null and void as a result
of the Chinese people's fight against Japanese imperialism and of the
intervention by other imperialist powers. In 1922 at the Washington Nine-Power
Conference called by the United States. A treaty [3] was
signed which once again placed China under the joint domination of several
imperialist powers. But before long the situation changed again. The Incident
of September 18, 1931, [4] began the present stage of
Japan's colonization of China. As Japanese aggression was temporarily limited
to the four northeastern provinces, [5] some people felt
that the Japanese imperialists would probably advance no farther. Today things
are different. The Japanese imperialists have already shown their intention
of penetrating south of the Great Wall and occupying all China. Now they
want to convert the whole of China from a semi-colony shared by several
imperialist powers into a colony monopolized by Japan. The recent Eastern
Hopei Incident [6] and diplomatic
talks[7] are clear indications of this trend of events
which threatens the survival of the whole Chinese people. This faces all
classes and political groups in China with the question of what to do. Resist?
Surrender? Or vacillate between the two?

Now let us see how the different classes in China answer this question.

The workers and the peasants are all demanding resistance. The revolution
of 1924-27, the agrarian revolution from 1927 to the present day, and the
anti-Japanese tide since the Incident of September 18, 1931, have all proved
that the working class and peasantry are the most resolute forces in the
Chinese revolution.

The petty bourgeoisie is also demanding resistance. Have not the student
youth and the urban petty bourgeoisie already started a broad anti-Japanese
movement?[8] This section of the Chinese petty bourgeoisie
took part in the revolution of 1924-27. Like the peasants, they are small
producers in their economic status, and their interests are irreconcilable
with those of imperialism. Imperialism and the Chinese counter-revolutionary
forces have done them great harm, driving many into unemployment, bankruptcy
or semi-bankruptcy. Now, faced with the immediate danger of becoming slaves
to a foreign nation, they have no alternative but to resist.

But how do the national bourgeoisie, the comprador and landlord classes,
and the Kuomintang face up to this question?

The big local tyrants and evil gentry, the big warlords and the big bureaucrats
and compradors have long made up their minds. They maintain, as they have
done all along, that revolution of whatever kind is worse than imperialism.
They have formed a camp of traitors, for whom the question of whether to
become slaves of a foreign nation simply does not exist because they have
already lost all sense of nationality and their interests are inseparably
linked with imperialism. Their chieftain is Chiang
Kai-shek.[9] This camp of traitors are deadly enemies
of the Chinese people. Japanese imperialism could not have become so blatant
in its aggression were it not for this pack of traitors. They are the running
dogs of imperialism.

The national bourgeoisie presents a complicated problem. This class took
part in the revolution of 1924-27, but terrified by the flames of revolution,
it later deserted to the enemy of the people, the Chiang Kai-shek clique.
The question is whether there is any possibility that this class will undergo
a change in the present circumstances. We think there is. For the national
bourgeoisie is not the same as either the landlord or the comprador class;
there is a difference between them. The national bourgeoisie is less feudal
than the landlord class and not so comprador as the comprador class. The
section having more ties with foreign capital and the Chinese landed interests
form the right-wing of the national bourgeoisie; and we shall not, for the
moment, consider whether it can change or not. The problem lies with those
sections which have few or no such ties. We believe that in the new situation
in which China is threatened with being reduced to a colony these sections
may change their attitude. The change will be marked by vacillation. On the
one hand they dislike imperialism, and on the other they fear thorough
revolution, and they vacillate between the two. This explains why they took
part in the revolution of 1924-27 and why, in the end, they went over to
Chiang Kai-shek's side. In what respect does the present period differ from
1927 when Chiang Kai-shek betrayed the revolution? China was then still a
semi-colony, but now she is on the way to becoming a colony. Over the past
nine years the national bourgeoisie has deserted its ally, the working class,
and made friends with the landlord and comprador classes, but has it gained
anything? Nothing, except the bankruptcy or semi-bankruptcy of its industrial
and commercial enterprises. Hence we believe that in the present situation
the attitude of the national bourgeoisie can change. What will be the extent
of the change? The general characteristic of the national bourgeoisie is
to vacillate. But at a certain stage of the struggle, one section (the left-wing)
may join in, while another section may vacillate towards neutrality.

Whose class interests does the 19th Route Army led by Tsai Ting-kai
[10] and others represent? Those of the national bourgeoisie,
the upper petty bourgeoisie, and the rich peasants and small landlords in
the countryside. Did not Tsai Ting-kai and his associates once fight bitterly
against the Red Army? Yes, but they subsequently concluded an anti-Japanese
and anti-Chiang alliance with the Red Army. In Kiangsi they had attacked
the Red Army, but later in Shanghai they fought the Japanese imperialists;
later still, in Fukien they came to terms with the Red Army and turned their
guns against Chiang Kai-shek. Whatever course Tsai Ting-kai and his associates
may take in the future, and despite their Fukien People's Government's adherence
to old practice in failing to arouse the people to struggle, it must be
considered beneficial to the revolution that they turned their guns, originally
trained on the Red Army, against Japanese imperialism and Chiang Kai-shek.
It marked a split within the Kuomintang camp. If the circumstances following
the September 18th Incident could cause this group to split away, why cannot
the present circumstances give rise to other splits in the Kuomintang? Those
Party members who hold that the whole landlord and bourgeois camp is united
and permanent and will not change under any circumstances are wrong. They
not only fail to appreciate the present grave situation, they have even forgotten
history.

Let me speak a little more about the past. In 1926 and 1927, during the time
when the revolutionary army advanced on Wuhan, captured it and marched into
Honan, Tang Sheng-chih and Feng Yu-hsiang [11] took part
in the revolution. In 1933, Feng Yu-hsiang co-operated for a time with the
Communist Party in forming the Anti-Japanese Allied Army in Chahar Province.

Take another striking example. Did not the 26th Route Army, which, together
with the 19th Route Army, had attacked the Red Army in Kiangsi, stage the
Ningtu Uprising [12] in December 1931 and become part
of the Red Army? The leaders of the Ningtu Uprising, Chao Po-sheng, Tung
Chen-tang and others, have become steadfast comrades in the revolution.

The anti-Japanese operations of Ma Chan-shan [13] in
the three northeastern provinces represented another split in the ruling
class camp.

All these instances indicate that splits will occur in the enemy camp when
all China comes within the range of Japanese bombs, and when the struggle
changes its normal pace and suddenly surges forward.

Now, comrades, let us turn to another aspect of the question.

Is it correct to object to our view on the ground that China's national
bourgeoisie is politically and economically flabby, and to argue that it
cannot possibly change its attitude in spite of the new circumstances? I
think not. If weakness is the reason for its inability to change its attitude,
why did the national bourgeoisie behave differently in 1924-27 when it did
not merely vacillate towards the revolution but actually joined it? Can one
say that the weakness of the national bourgeoisie is a new disease, and not
one that accompanies it from the very womb? Can one say that the national
bourgeoisie is weak today, but was not weak in 1924-27? One of the chief
political and economic characteristics of a semi-colonial country is the
weakness of its national bourgeoisie. That is exactly why the imperialists
dare to bully them, and it follows that one of their characteristics is dislike
of imperialism. Of course, so far from denying it, we fully recognize that
it is the very weakness of the national bourgeoisie that may make it easy
for the imperialists, landlords and compradors to entice them with the bait
of some temporary advantage; hence their lack of revolutionary thoroughness.
Nevertheless, it cannot be said that in the present circumstances there is
no difference between the national bourgeoisie and the landlord and comprador
classes.

Therefore, we emphatically assert that when the national crisis reaches a
crucial point, splits will occur in the Kuomintang camp. Such splits have
revealed themselves in the vacillation of the national bourgeoisie and the
emergence of such anti-Japanese figures as Feng Yu-hsiang, Tsai Ting-kai
and Ma Chan-shan, who have become popular for a time. Basically, these splits
are unfavourable to the counterrevolution and favourable to the revolution.
Their possibility is increased by China's uneven political and economic
development, and the consequent uneven development of the revolution.

Comrades, so much for the positive side of the question. Now let me take
up the negative side, namely, the fact that certain elements among the national
bourgeoisie are often past masters at deceiving the people. Why? Because
apart from the genuine supporters of the people's revolutionary cause, this
class includes many who temporarily appear as revolutionaries or
semi-revolutionaries, and who thus acquire a deceptive status which makes
it difficult for the people to see through their lack of revolutionary
thoroughness and their false trappings. This increases the responsibility
devolving on the Communist Party to criticize its allies, unmask the fake
revolutionaries, and gain the leadership. To deny the possibility that the
national bourgeoisie may vacillate and join the revolution during great upheavals
amounts to abandoning, or at any rate to minimizing, our Party's task of
contending for leadership. For if the national bourgeoisie were exactly the
same as the landlords and compradors and had the same vile and traitorous
visage, there would be little or no problem of contending with it for leadership.

In making a general analysis of the attitude of the Chinese landlord class
and the bourgeoisie in times of great upheaval, we should also point to another
aspect, namely, that even the landlord and comprador camp is not completely
united. The reason is that China is a semicolonial country for which many
imperialist powers are contending. When the struggle is directed against
Japanese imperialism, then the running dogs of the United States or Britain,
obeying the varying tones of their masters' commands, may engage in veiled
or even open strife with the Japanese imperialists and their running dogs.
There have been many instances of such dog-fights and we shall not dwell
on them. We will only mention the fact that Hu Han-min
[14] a Kuomintang politician once detained by Chiang
Kai-shek, has recently added his signature to the Six-Point Programme for
Resisting Japan and Saving the Nation [15] which we have
advanced. The warlords of the Kwangtung and Kwangsi cliques
[16] who back Hu Han-min are also opposing Chiang Kai-shek,
under the deceitful slogans of "Recover our lost territory", and "Resist
Japan and at the same time suppress the bandits"[17]
(as against Chiang Kai-shek's slogan of "First suppress the bandits, then
resist Japan"). Is this not rather strange? No, it is not strange at all,
but merely a particularly interesting example of a fight between large and
small dogs, between well-fed and ill-fed dogs. It is not a big rift, but
neither is it small; it is at once an irritating and painful contradiction.
But such fights, such rifts, such contradictions are of use to the revolutionary
people. We must turn to good account all such fights, rifts and contradictions
in the enemy camp and turn them against our present main enemy.

Summing up the question of class relations, we may say that the basic change
in the situation, namely, the Japanese invasion of China south of the Great
Wall, has changed the relationship among the various classes in China,
strengthening the camp of national revolution and weakening that of
counter-revolution.

Now let us discuss the situation in the camp of China's national revolution.

First, the Red Army. As you know, comrades, for almost a year and a half
the three main contingents of the Chinese Red Army have carried out great
shifts of position. The Sixth Army Group led by Jen Pi-shih
[18] and other comrades began to shift to Comrade Ho
Lung's area [19] in August last year, and in October
we ourselves started to shift position.[20] In March
this year the Red Army in the Szechuan-Shensi border area
[21] began its shift. All three Red Army contingents
have abandoned their old positions and moved to new regions. These great
shifts have turned the old areas into guerrilla zones. The Red Army has been
considerably weakened in the process. From this aspect of the over-all situation,
we can see that the enemy has won a temporary and partial victory, while
we have suffered a temporary and partial defeat. Is this statement correct?
I think it is. For it is a statement of fact. However, some people (Chang
Kuo-tao [22] for instance) say that the Central Red Army
[23] has failed. Is that correct? No. For it is not a
statement of fact. In approaching a problem a Marxist should see the whole
as well as the parts. A frog in a well says, "The sky is no bigger than the
mouth of the well." That is untrue, for the sky is not just the size of the
mouth of the well. If it said, "A part of the sky is the size of the mouth
of a well", that would be true, for it tallies with the facts. What we say
isthat in one respect the Red Army has failed (i.e.,
failed to maintain its original positions), but in another respect it
has won a victory (i.e., in executing the plan of the Long March). In one
respect the enemy won a victory (i.e., in occupying our original positions),
but in another respect he has failed (i.e., failed to execute his plan of
"encirclement and suppression"and of "pursuit and
suppression"). That is the only appropriate formulation, for we have completed
the Long March.

Speaking of the Long March, one may ask, "What is its significance?" We answer
that the Long March is the first of its kind in the annals of history, that
it is a manifesto, a propaganda force, a seeding-machine. Since Pan Ku divided
the heavens from the earth and the Three Sovereigns and Five Emperors
[24] reigned, has history ever witnessed a long march
such as ours? For twelve months we were under daily reconnaissance and bombing
from the skies by scores of planes, while on land we were encircled and pursued,
obstructed and intercepted by a huge force of several hundred thousand men,
and we encountered untold difficulties and dangers on the way; yet by using
our two legs we swept across a distance of more than twenty thousand
li through the length and breadth of eleven provinces. Let us ask,
has history ever known a long march to equal ours? No, never. The Long March
is a manifesto. It has proclaimed to the world that the Red Army is an army
of heroes, while the imperialists and their running dogs, Chiang Kai-shek
and his like, are impotent. It has proclaimed their utter failure to encircle,
pursue, obstruct and intercept us. The Long March is also a propaganda force.
It has announced to some 200 million people in eleven provinces that the
road of the Red Army is their only road to liberation. Without the Long March,
how could the broad masses have learned so quickly about the existence of
the great truth which the Red Army embodies? The Long March is also a
seeding-machine. In the eleven provinces it has sown many seeds which will
sprout, leaf, blossom, and bear fruit, and will yield a harvest in the future.
In a word, the Long March has ended with victory for us and defeat for the
enemy. Who brought the Long March to victory? The Communist Party. Without
the Communist Party, a long march of this kind would have been inconceivable.
The Chinese Communist Party, its leadership, its cadres and its members fear
no difficulties or hardships. Whoever questions our ability to lead the
revolutionary war will fall into the morass of opportunism. A new situation
arose as soon as the Long March was over. In the battle of Chihlochen the
Central Red Army and the Northwestern Red Army, fighting in fraternal solidarity,
shattered the traitor Chiang Kai-shek's campaign of "encirclement and
suppression" against the Shensi-Kansu border area [25]
and thus laid the cornerstone for the task undertaken by the Central Committee
of the Party, the task of setting up the national headquarters of the revolution
in northwestern China.

This being the situation with regard to the main body of the Red Army, what
about the guerrilla warfare in the southern provinces? Our guerrilla forces
there have suffered some setbacks but have not been wiped out. In many places,
they are reasserting themselves, growing and
expanding.[26]

In the Kuomintang areas, the workers' struggle is now moving beyond the factory
walls, and from being an economic struggle is becoming a political struggle.
A heroic working-class struggle against the Japanese and the traitors is
now in intense ferment and, judging by the situation, it will erupt before
long.

The peasants' struggle has never ceased. Harassed by aggression from abroad,
by difficulties at home and by natural disasters, the peasants have unleashed
widespread struggles in the form of guerrilla warfare, mass uprisings and
famine riots. The anti-Japanese guerrilla warfare now going on in the
northeastern provinces and eastern Hopei [27] is their
reply to the attacks of Japanese imperialism.

The student movement has already grown considerably and will certainly go
on doing so. But this movement can sustain itself and break through the martial
law imposed by the traitors and the policy of disruption and massacre practised
by the police, the secret service agents, the scoundrels in the educational
world and the fascists only if it is co-ordinated with the struggles of the
workers, peasants and soldiers.

We have already dealt with the vacillation of the national bourgeoisie, the
rich peasants and small landlords and the possibility that they may actually
participate in the anti-Japanese struggle.

The minority nationalities, and especially the people of Inner Mongolia who
are directly menaced by Japanese imperialism, are now rising up in struggle.
As time goes on, their struggle will merge with that of the people in northern
China and with the operations of the Red Army in the Northwest.

All this indicates that the revolutionary situation is now changing from
a localized into a nation-wide one and that it is gradually changing from
a state of unevenness to a certain degree of evenness. We are on the eve
of a great change. The task of the Party is to form a revolutionary national
united front by combining the activities of the Red Army with all the activities
of the workers, the peasants, the students, the petty bourgeoisie and the
national bourgeoisie throughout the country.

THE NATIONAL UNITED FRONT

Having surveyed the situation with regard to both the counterrevolution and
the revolution, we shall find it easy to define the Party's tactical tasks.

What is the basic tactical task of the Party? It is none other than to form
a broad revolutionary national united front.

When the revolutionary situation changes, revolutionary tactics and methods
of leadership must change accordingly. The task of the Japanese imperialists,
the collaborators and the traitors is to turn China into a colony, while
our task is to turn China into a free and independent country with full
territorial integrity.

To win independence and freedom for China is a great task. It demands that
we fight against foreign imperialism and the domestic counter-revolutionary
forces. Japanese imperialism is determined to bludgeon its way deep into
China. As yet the domestic counter-revolutionary forces of the big landlord
and comprador classes are stronger than the people's revolutionary forces.
The overthrow of Japanese imperialism and the counter-revolutionary forces
in China cannot be accomplished in a day, and we must be prepared to devote
a long time to it; it cannot be accomplished by small forces, and we must
therefore accumulate great forces. In China, as in the world as a whole,
the counter-revolutionary forces are weaker than before and the revolutionary
forces stronger. This estimate is correct, representing one aspect of the
matter. At the same time, it must be pointed out that the counter-revolutionary
forces in China and in the world as a whole are stronger than the revolutionary
forces for the time being. This estimate is also correct, representing another
aspect of the matter. The uneven political and economic development of China
gives rise to the uneven development of her revolution. As a rule, revolution
starts, grows and triumphs first in those places in which the
counterrevolutionary forces are comparatively weak, while it has yet to start
or grows very slowly in those places in which they are strong. Such has long
been the situation for the Chinese revolution. It can be predicted that the
general revolutionary situation will grow further at certain stages in the
future but that the unevenness will remain. The transformation of this unevenness
into a general evenness will require a very long time, very great efforts,
and the Party's application of a correct line. Seeing that the revolutionary
war led by the Communist Party of the Soviet Union [28]
took three years to conclude, we must be prepared to devote to the already
protracted revolutionary war led by the Chinese Communist Party the longer
time necessary to dispose of the domestic and foreign counter-revolutionary
forces finally and thoroughly. The kind of impatience that was formerly displayed
will never do. Moreover, sound revolutionary tactics must be worked out;
we will never achieve great things if we keep on milling around within narrow
confines. This does not mean that in China things have to be done slowly;
no, they must be done boldly, because the danger of national subjugation
does not allow us to slacken for a moment. From now on the revolution will
certainly develop much faster than before, for both China and the world are
approaching a new period of war and revolution. For all that, China's
revolutionary war will remain a protracted one; this follows from the strength-of
imperialism and the uneven development of the revolution. We say that the
present situation is one in which a new high tide in the national revolution
is imminent and in which China is on the eve of a great new nation-wide
revolution; this is one characteristic of the present revolutionary situation.
This is a fact, and it represents one aspect of the matter. But we must also
say that imperialism is still a force to be earnestly reckoned with, that
the unevenness in the development of the revolutionary forces is a serious
weakness, and that to defeat our enemies we must be prepared to fight a
protracted war; this is another characteristic of the present revolutionary
situation. This, too, is a fact, and represents another aspect of the matter.
Both characteristics, both facts, teach and urge us to revise our tactics
and change our ways of disposing our forces and carrying on the struggle
to suit the situation. The present situation demands that we boldly discard
all closed-doorism, form a broad united front and guard against adventurism.
We must not plunge into decisive battles until the time is ripe and unless
we have the necessary strength.

Here I shall not discuss the relation of adventurism to closed-doorism, or
the possible dangers of adventurism as events unfold on a larger scale; that
can be left for later. For the moment I shall confine myself to explaining
that united front tactics and closed-door tactics are diametrically opposed.

The former requires the recruiting of large forces for the purpose of surrounding
and annihilating the enemy.

The latter means fighting single-handed in desperate combat against a formidable
enemy.

The advocates of united front tactics say, if we are to make a proper estimate
of the possibility of forming a broad revolutionary national united front,
a proper estimate must be made of the changes that may occur in the alignment
of revolutionary and counter-revolutionary forces in China resulting from
the attempt of Japanese imperialism to turn China into a colony. Without
a proper estimate of the strong and weak points of the Japanese and Chinese
counter-revolutionary forces and of the Chinese revolutionary forces, we
shall be unable fully to understand the necessity of organizing a broad
revolutionary national united front, or to take firm measures to break down
closed-doorism, or to use the united front as a means of organizing and rallying
millions of people and all the armies that are potentially friendly to the
revolution for the purpose of advancing to strike at our main target, namely,
Japanese imperialism and its running dogs, the Chinese traitors, or to use
this tactical weapon of ours to strike at the main target before us, but
instead we shall aim at a variety of targets so that our bullets will hit
not the principal enemy but our lesser enemies or even our allies. This would
mean failure to single out the principal enemy and waste of ammunition. It
would mean inability to close in and isolate him. It would mean inability
to draw to our side all those in the enemy camp and on the enemy front who
have joined them under compulsion, and those who were our enemies yesterday
but may become our friends today. It would in fact mean helping the enemy,
holding back, isolating and constricting the revolution, and bringing it
to a low ebb and even to defeat.

The advocates of closed-door tactics say the above arguments are all wrong.
The forces of the revolution must be pure, absolutely pure, and the road
of the revolution must be straight, absolutely straight. Nothing is correct
except what is literally recorded in Holy Writ. The national bourgeoisie
is entirely and eternally counter-revolutionary. Not an inch must be conceded
to the rich peasants. The yellow trade unions must be fought tooth and nail.
If we shake hands with Tsai Ting-kai, we must call him a counter-revolutionary
at the same moment. Was there ever a cat that did not love fish or a warlord
who was not a counter-revolutionary? Intellectuals are three-day revolutionaries
whom it is dangerous to recruit. It follows therefore that closed-doorism
is the sole wonder-working magic, while the united front is anopportunist tactic.

Comrades, which is right, the united front or closed-doorism? Which indeed
is approved by Marxism-Leninism? I answer without the slightest hesitation--the
united front and not closed-doorism. Three-year-olds have many ideas which
are right, but they cannot be entrusted with serious national or world affairs
because they do not understand them yet. Marxism-Leninism is opposed to the
"infantile disorder" found in the revolutionary ranks. This infantile disorder
is just what the confirmed exponents of closed-doorism advocate. Like every
other activity in the world, revolution always follows a tortuous road and
never a straight one. The alignment of forces in the revolutionary and
counter-revolutionary camps can change, just as everything else in the world
changes. The Party's new tactics of a broad united front start from the two
fundamental facts that Japanese imperialism is bent on reducing all China
to a colony and that China's revolutionary forces still have serious weaknesses.
In order to attack the forces of the counter-revolution, what the revolutionary
forces need today is to organize millions upon millions of the masses and
move a mighty revolutionary army into action. The plain truth is that only
a force of such magnitude can crush the Japanese imperialists and the traitors
and collaborators. Therefore, united front tactics are the only Marxist-Leninist
tactics. The tactics of closed-doorism are, on the contrary, the tactics
of the regal isolationist. Closed-doorism just "drives the fish into deep
waters and the sparrows into the thickets", and it will drive the millions
upon millions of the masses, this mighty army, over to the enemy's side,
which will certainly win his acclaim. In practice, closed-doorism is the
faithful servant of the Japanese imperialists and the traitors and collaborators.
Its adherents' talk of the "pure" and the "straight" will be condemned by
Marxist-Leninists and commended by the Japanese imperialists. We definitely
want no closed-doorism; what we want is the revolutionary nationalunited front, which will spell death to the Japanese imperialists
andthetraitors and collaborators.

If our government has hitherto been based on the alliance of theworkers, the peasants and the urban petty bourgeoisie, from now
on it must be so transformed as to include also the members of all
otherclasses who are willing to take part in the national
revolution.

At the present time, the basic task of such a government should be to oppose
the annexation of China by Japanese imperialism. It will have a broader
representation so that it may include those who are interested only in the
national revolution and not in the agrarian revolution, and even, if they
so desire, those who may oppose Japanese imperialism and its running dogs,
though they are not opposed to the European and U.S. imperialists because
of their close ties with the latter. Therefore, as a matter of principle,
the programme of such a government should be in keeping with the basic task
of fighting Japanese imperialism and its lackeys, and we should modify our
past policies accordingly.

The special feature on the revolutionary side at present is the existence
of a well-steeled Communist Party and Red Army. This is of crucial importance.
Great difficulties would arise if they did not exist. Why? Because the traitors
and collaborators in China are numerous and powerful and are sure to devise
every possible means to wreck the united front; they will sow dissension
by means of intimidation and bribery and by maneuvering among various groupings,
and will employ their armies to oppress and crush, one by one, all those
weaker than themselves who want to part company with them and join us in
fighting Japan. All this would hardly be avoidable if the anti-Japanese
government and army were to lack this vital factor, i.e., the Communist
Party and the Red Army. The revolution failed in 1927 chiefly because, with
the opportunist line then prevailing in the Communist Party, no effort was
made to expand our own ranks (the workers' and peasants' movement and the
armed forces led by the Communist Party), and exclusive reliance was placed
on a temporary ally, the Kuomintang. The result was that when imperialism
ordered its lackeys, the landlord and comprador classes, to spread their
numerous tentacles and draw over first Chiang Kai-shek and then Wang Ching-wei,
the revolution suffered defeat. In those days the revolutionary united front
had no mainstay, no strong revolutionary armed forces, and so when the defections
came thick and fast, the Communist Party was forced to fight single-handed
and was powerless to foil the tactics of crushing their opponents one by
one which were adopted by the imperialists and the Chinese
counter-revolutionaries. True, we had the troops under Ho Lung and Yeh Ting,
but they were not yet politically consolidated, and the Party was not very
skilled in leading them, so that they were finally defeated. The lesson we
paid for with our blood was that the lack of a hard core of revolutionary
forces brings the revolution to defeat. Today things are quite different.
Now we have a strong Communist Party and a strong Red Army, and we also have
the base areas of the Red Army. Not only are the Communist Party and the
Red Army serving as the initiator of a national united front against Japan
today, but in the future too they will inevitably become the powerful mainstay
of China's anti-Japanese government and army, capable of preventing the Japanese
imperialists and Chiang Kai-shek from carrying through their policy of disrupting
this united front. However, we must be very vigilant because the Japanese
imperialists and Chiang Kai-shek will undoubtedly resort to every possible
form of intimidation and bribery and of manoeuvering among the various groupings.

Naturally we cannot expect every section of the broad national united front
against Japan to be as firm as the Communist Party and the Red Army. In the
course of their activities some bad elements may withdraw from the united
front under the influence of the enemy. However, we need not fear the loss
of such people. While bad elements may drop out under the enemy's influence,
good people will come in under ours. The national united front will live
and grow as long as the Communist Party and the Red Army live and grow. Such
is the leading role of the Communist Party and the Red Army in the national
united front. The Communists are no longer political infants and are able
to take care of themselves and to handle relations with their allies. If
the Japanese imperialists and Chiang Kai-shek can manoeuvre in relation to
the revolutionary forces, the Communist Party can do the same in relation
to the counter-revolutionary forces. If they can draw bad elements in our
ranks over to their side, we can equally well draw their "bad elements" (good
ones from our point of view) over to our side. If we can draw a larger number
over to our side, this will deplete the enemy's ranks and strengthen ours.
In short, two basic forces are now locked in struggle, and in the nature
of things all the forces in between will have to line up on one side or the
other. The Japanese imperialists' policy of subjugating China and Chiang
Kai-shek's policy of betraying China will inevitably drive many people over
to our side--either directly into joining the ranks of the Communist Party
and the Red Army or into forming a united front with us. This will come about
unless we pursue closed door tactics.

Why change the "workers' and peasants' republic" into a "people's republic"?

Our government represents not only the workers and peasants but the whole
nation. This has been implicit in our slogan of a workers' and peasants'
democratic republic, because the workers and peasants; constitute 80 to go
per cent of the population. The Ten-Point Programme [30]
adopted by the Sixth National Congress of our Party embodies the interests
of the whole nation and not of the workers and peasants alone. But the present
situation requires us to change our slogan, to change it into one of a people's
republic. The reason is that Japanese invasion has altered class relations
in China, and it is now possible not only for the petty bourgeoisie but even
for the national bourgeoisie to join the anti-Japanese struggle.

The people's republic will definitely not represent the interests of the
enemy classes. On the contrary, it will stand in direct opposition to the
landlord and comprador classes, the lackeys of imperialism,. and will not
count them among the people. In the same way, Chiang Kai-shek's "National
Government of the Republic of China" represents only the wealthiest, but
not the common people whom it does not count as part of the nation. As 80
to 90 per cent of China's population is made up of workers and peasants,
the people's republic ought to represent their interests first and foremost.
However, by throwing off imperialist oppression to make China free and
independent and by throwing off landlord oppression to free China from
semi-feudalism, the people's republic will benefit not only the workers and
peasants but other sections of the people too. The sum total of the interests
of the workers, peasants and the rest of the people constitutes the interests
of the whole Chinese nation. The comprador and the landlord classes also
live on Chinese soil, but as they have no regard for the national interests,
their interests clash with those of the majority. This small minority are
the only ones that we break with and are clashing with, and we therefore
have the right to call ourselves the representatives of the whole nation.

There is, of course, a dash of interests between the working class and the
national bourgeoisie. We shall not be able to extend the national revolution
successfully unless the working class, the vanguard of the national revolution,
is accorded political and economic rights and is enabled to direct its strength
against imperialism and its running dogs, the traitors. However if the national
bourgeoisie joins the anti-imperialist united front, the working class and
the national bourgeoisie will have interests in common. In the period of
the bourgeois-democratic revolution, the people's republic will not expropriate
private property other than imperialist and feudal private property, and
so far from confiscating the national bourgeoisie's industrial and commercial
enterprises, it will encourage their development. We shall protect every
national capitalist who does not support the imperialists or the Chinese
traitors. In the stage of democratic revolution there are limits to the struggle
between labour and capital. The labour laws of the people's republic will
protect the interests of the workers, but will not prevent the national
bourgeoisie from making profits or developing their industrial and commercial
enterprises, because such development is bad for imperialism and good for
the Chinese people. Thus it is clear that the people's republic will represent
the interests of all strata opposed to imperialism and the feudal forces.
The government of the people's republic will be based primarily on the workers
and peasants, but will also include representatives of the other classes
which are opposed to imperialism and the feudal forces.

But is it not dangerous to let the representatives of such classes join the
government of the people's republic? No. The workers and peasants are the
basic masses of the republic. In giving the urban petty bourgeoisie, the
intellectuals and other sections of the population who support the
anti-imperialist and anti-feudal programme the right to have a voice in the
government of the people's republic and to work in it, the right to vote
and stand for election, we must not allow the interests of the workers and
peasants, the basic masses, to be violated. The essential part of our programme
must be the protection of their interests. With their representatives comprising
the majority in this government and with the Communist Party exercising
leadership and working within it, there is a guarantee that the participation
of other classes will present no danger. It is perfectly obvious that the
Chinese revolution at the present stage is still a bourgeois-democratic and
not a proletarian socialist revolution in nature. Only the counter-revolutionary
Trotskyites [31] talk such nonsense as that China has
already completed her bourgeois-democratic revolution and that any further
revolution can only be socialist. The revolution of 1924-27 was a
bourgeois-democratic revolution, which was not carried to completion but
failed. The agrarian revolution which we have led since 1927 is also a
bourgeois-democratic revolution, because it is directed not against capitalism,
but against imperialism and feudalism. This will remain true of our revolution
for quite a long time to come.

Basically, theworkers, the peasants and the urbanpetty bourgeoisie arc still the motive forces of the revolution,
but now there may be the national bourgeoisie as well.

The change in the revolution will come later. In the future the democratic
revolution will inevitably be transformed into a socialist revolution. As
to when the transition will take place, that will depend on the presence
of the necessary conditions, and it may take quite a long time. We should
not hold forth about transition until all the necessary political and economic
conditions are present and until it is advantageous and not detrimental to
the overwhelming majority of the people throughout China. It is wrong to
have any doubts on this matter and expect the transition to take place soon,
as some of our comrades did when they maintained that the transition in the
revolution would begin the moment the democratic revolution began to triumph
in key provinces. They did so because they failed to understand what kind
of country China is politically and economically and to realize that, compared
with Russia, China will find it more difficult, and require much more time
and effort, to complete her democratic revolution politically and economically.

INTERNATIONAL SUPPORT

Finally, a word is necessary about the relation between the Chinese and the
world revolution.

Ever since the monster of imperialism came into being, the affairs of the
world have become so closely interwoven that it is impossible to separate
them. We Chinese have the spirit to fight the enemy to the last drop of our
blood, the determination to recover our lost territory by our own efforts,
and the ability to stand on our own feet in the family of nations. But this
does not mean that we can dispense with international support; no, today
international support is necessary for the revolutionary struggle of any
nation or country. There is the old adage, "In the Spring and Autumn Era
there were no righteous wars."[32] This is even truer
of imperialism today, for it is only the oppressed nations and the oppressed
classes that can wage just wars. All wars anywhere in the world in which
the people rise up to fight their oppressors are just struggles. The February
and October Revolutions in Russia were just wars. The revolutions of the
people in various European countries after World War I were just struggles.
In China, the Anti-Opium War,[33] the War of the Taiping
Heavenly Kingdom,[34] the Yi Ho Tuan
War,[35] the Revolutionary War of
1911,[36] the Northern Expedition of 1926-27, the Agrarian
Revolutionary War from 1927 to the present, and the present resistance to
Japan and punitive actions against traitors--these are all just wars. Now,
in the mounting tide of nation-wide struggle against Japan and of world-wide
struggle against fascism, just wars will spread all over China and the globe.
All just wars support each other, while all unjust wars should be turned
into just wars--this is the Leninist line.[37] Our war
against Japan needs the support of the people of the whole world and, above
all, the support of the people of the Soviet Union, which they will certainly
give us because they and we are bound together in a common cause. In the
past, the Chinese revolutionary forces were temporarily cut off from the
world revolutionary forces by Chiang Kai-shek, and in this sense we were
isolated. Now the situation has changed, and changed to our advantage. Henceforth
it will continue to change to our advantage. We can no longer be isolated.
This provides a necessary condition for China's victory in the war against
Japan and for victory in the Chinese revolution.

NOTES

1. The Twenty-one Demands on the Yuan Shih-kai government
were presented by the Japanese imperialists on January 18. 1915. On May 7,
they sent an ultimatum demanding a reply within forty-eight hours. The demands
were divided into five parts. The first four contained the following: to
transfer to Japan the rights Germany had seized in Shantung and to grant
Japan additional rights in the province; to grant rights to the Japanese
to lease or own land in southern Manchuria and eastern Mongolia and to establish
residence, engage in industry and commerce, and have exclusive railway building
and mining rights there; to reorganize the Han-Yeh-Ping Iron and Steel Company
as a joint Sino-Japanese enterprise; and to undertake not to lease or cede
any harbours or islands along China's coastline to any third power. The fifth
part contained demands that Japan should control China's political, financial,
military and police affairs and should build vital railway lines connecting
the provinces of Hupeh, Kiangsi and Kwangtung. Yuan Shih-kai accepted all
the demands except those in the fifth part, about which he pleaded for "further
negotiations". Thanks to the unanimous opposition of the Chinese people,
Japan failed to get her demands implemented.

2. Yuan Shih-kai was the head of the Northern warlords
in the last years of the Ching Dynasty. After the Ching Dynasty was overthrown
by the Revolution of 1911, he usurped the presidency of the Republic and
organized the first government of the Northern warlords, which represented
the big landlord and big comprador classes. He did this by relying on
counter-revolutionary armed force and on the support of the imperialists
and by taking advantage of the conciliationist nature of the bourgeoisie
then leading the revolution. In 1915 he wanted to make himself emperor and,
to gain the support of the Japanese imperialists, accepted the Twenty-one
Demands with which Japan aimed at obtaining exclusive control of all China.
In December of the same year an uprising against his assumption of the throne
took place in Yunnan Province and promptly won country-wide response and
support. Yuan Shih-kai died in Peking in June 1916.

3. The Nine-Power Conference in Washington was called by
the U.S. government in November 1921; China, Britain, France, Italy, Belgium,
the Netherlands, Portugal and Japan were invited. It was a struggle between
the United States and Japan for hegemony in the Far East. On February 6,
1922, a nine-power treaty was concluded on the basis of the principle, advanced
by the United States, of the "open door" or "equal opportunities for all
nations in China". The aim of this treaty was to create a situation in which
the imperialist powers had joint control of China, and it actually cleared
the way for exclusive domination by the U.S. imperialists, the purpose being
to frustrate Japan's plans for exclusive domination.

4. On September 18, 1931, the Japanese "Kwantung Army"
in northeastern China seized Shenyang. Under Chiang Kai-shek's order of "absolute
non-resistance", the Chinese troops at Shenyang and elsewhere in the Northeast
(the Northeastern Army) withdrew to the south of Shanhaikuan, and consequently
the Japanese forces rapidly occupied the provinces of Liaoning, Kirin and
Heilungkiang. This act of Japanese aggression has become known as the "September
18th Incident".

5. The "four northeastern provinces" were then Liaoning,
Kirin, Heilungkiang and Jehol, which correspond to the present Liaoning,
Kirin and Heilungkiang Provinces, the northeastern part of Hopei Province
north of the Great Wall and the eastern part of the Inner Mongolian Autonomous
Region. After the September 18th Incident, the Japanese invaders occupied
Liaoning, Kirin and Heilungkiang and later, in 1933, seized Jehol.

6. At the instigation of the Japanese, a puppet regime
called the "Eastern Hopei Anti-Communist Autonomous Administration" was
established in twenty-two counties in eastern Hopei by the Kuomintang traitor
Yin Ju-keng on November 25, 1935. This became known as the Eastern Hopei
Incident.

7. The diplomatic talks between the Chiang Kai-shek government
and the Japanese government discussed the so called "Three Principles of
Hirota", i.e., the "Three Principles for Dealing with China" put forward
by Japanese Foreign Minister Hirota, namely, (1) suppression by China of
all anti-Japanese movements; (2) establishment of economic co-operation between
China, Japan and "Manchukuo"; and (3) joint defence by China and Japan against
communism. On January 21, 1936, Hirota told the Diet that the Chinese government
"has accepted the three principles proposed by the Empire".

8. The year 1935 witnessed a new upsurge in the popular
patriotic movement throughout the country. Students in Peking, under the
leadership of the Communist Party of China, held a patriotic demonstration
on December 9, putting forward such slogans as "Stop the civil war and unite
to resist foreign aggression" and "Down with Japanese imperialism". This
movement broke through the long reign of terror imposed by the Kuomintang
government in league with the Japanese invaders and very quickly won the
people's support throughout the country. It is known as the "December 8th
Movement". The outcome was that new changes manifested themselves in the
relations among the various classes in the country, and the Anti-Japanese
National United Front proposed by the Communist Party of China became the
openly advocated policy of all patriotic people. The Chiang Kai-shek government
with its traitorous policy became very isolated.

9. At the time of this report Chiang Kai-shek, after selling
out the Northeast to Japan, was selling out northern China while actively
keeping up his fighting against the Red Army. Therefore the Chinese Communist
Party had to do its best to expose him as a traitor, and naturally he was
not included in the Anti-Japanese National United Front proposed by the Party.
But already in this report Comrade Mao Tse-tung mentioned the possible
disintegration of the camp of the Chinese landlord and comprador classes
as a result of the contradictions among the imperialist powers. And Japan's
attack on northern China did subsequently lead to serious dashes of interest
between Japanese and Anglo-American imperialism. The Chinese Communist Party
maintained that the Chiang Kai-shek clique, with its close ties with Anglo-
American imperialist interests, might change its attitude to Japan at its
masters' bidding, and therefore it adopted the policy of compelling Chiang
Kai-shek to resist Japan. On its return to northern Shensi from Shansi, in
May 1936 the Red Army appealed directly to the Nanking Kuomintang government
for an end to the civil war and for united resistance to Japan. In August
of the same year, the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party addressed
a letter to the Kuomintang's Central Executive Committee, calling for the
formation of a bi-partisan united front against Japan and negotiations between
the representatives of both parties. But Chiang Kai-shek rejected these
proposals. It was not until December 1936 when Chiang Kai-shek was detained
in Sian by Kuomintang army officers who favoured alliance with the Communists
against Japan that he was compelled to accept the Communist Party's demand
for ending the civil war and resisting Japan.

10. Tsai Ting-kai was deputy commander of the Kuomintang's
19th Route Army and commander of one of its corps, the two other leaders
being Chen Ming-shu and Chiang Kuang-nai. This army, which had fought the
Red Army in Kiangsi, was transferred to Shanghai after the September 18th
Incident. The mounting anti-Japanese tide of the people in Shanghai and the
whole country had a great impact on the 19th Route Army. When the Japanese
marines attacked in Shanghai during the night of January 28, 1932, the Army
and the people of Shanghai put up a joint resistance. However, the battle
was lost through the treachery of Chiang Kai-shek and Wang Ching-wei. Later,
on Chiang's orders, the 19th Route Army was transferred to Fukien to fight
the Red Army again. But the leaders of the Army gradually came to realize
the futility of such fighting. In November 1933, allying themselves with
Kuomintang forces under Li Chi-shen and others, they publicly renounced Chiang
Kai-shek, established the "People's Revolutionary Government of the Republic
of China" in Fukien, and concluded an agreement with the Red Army to resist
Japan and oppose Chiang Kai-shek. The 19th Route Army and Fukien People's
Government collapsed under the attacks of Chiang's troops. From then on,
Tsai Ting-kai and others gradually moved towards a position of co-operation
with the Communist Party.

11. Peng Yu-hsiang, together with the forces under his
command in Suiyuan Province, announced his break with the Northern warlord
clique and joined the revolution when the revolutionary Northern Expeditionary
Army reached Wuhan in September 1926. Early in 1927, his troops moved in
from Shensi to attack Honan Province in co-ordination with the Northern
Expeditionary Army. Although Feng participated inanti-Communist
activities following the betrayal of the revolution by Chiang Kai-shek and
Wang Ching-wei in 1927, there was always a clash of interests between him
and the Chiang Kai-shek clique. After Japan invaded China on September 18,
1931 he favoured resistance and in May 1933 co-operated with the Communist
Party in forming the people's Anti-Japanese Allied Army in Changchiakou.
His efforts came to naught in August under the pressure of both Chiang Kai-shek's
forces and the Japanese invaders. In his later years Feng continued to co-operate
with the Communist Party.

12. An uprising took place at Ningtu, Kiangsi in December
1931 within the Kuomintang's 26th Route Army, which was sent by Chiang Kai-shek
to attack the Red Army in Kiangsi Province. Led by Comrades Chao Po-sheng
and Tung Chen-tang, more than ten thousand officers and men rose up and joined
the Red Army in response to the Communist call for resistance to Japan.

13. Ma Chan-shan was an officer of the Kuomintang's
Northeastern Army whose troops were stationed in Heilungkiang. He and his
men fought the Japanese invaders who drove towards Heilungkiang via Liaoning
after the September 18th Incident.

14. Hu Han-min, a well-known Kuomintang politician, was
an opponent of Dr. Sun Yat-sen's policy of co-operation with the Chinese
Communist Party and was Chiang Kai-shek's accomplice in the counter-revolutionary
coup d'état of April 12, 1927. Later he fell out with Chiang in a
struggle for power and was held in detention by the latter. Set free after
the September 18th Incident, he left Nanking for Canton where he instigated
the warlords of Kwangtung and Kwangsi to oppose Chiang Kai-shek's Nanking
government for a considerable period of time.

15. The Six-Point Programme for Resisting Japan and Saving
the Nation was the "Chinese People's Basic Programme for Fighting Japan"
put forward by the Chinese Communist Party in 1934 and published over the
signatures of Soong Ching Ling (Mme. Sun Yat-sen) and others. The programme
consisted of the following points: (1) mobilize all sea, land and air forces
to fight Japan; (2) mobilize the people throughout the country; (3) arm all
the people; (4) confiscate the property of the Japanese imperialists in China
and of the traitors to defray war expenditure; (5) establish an all-China
committee for national armed defence, to be elected by the representatives
of workers, peasants, soldiers, students and businessmen; and (6) form an
alliance with all the forces opposed to the Japanese imperialists, and establish
friendly relations with all countries observing benevolent neutrality.

16. These warlords were Chen Chi-tang of Kwangtung and
Li Tsung-jen and Pai Chung-hsi of Kwangsi.

17. The Chiang Kai-shek gang of bandits described the
revolutionary people as "bandits" and their armed attacks upon and massacre
of the revolutionary people as "bandit suppression".

18. Comrade Jen Pi-shih was a veteran member of the Chinese
Communist Party and one of its first organizers. He was a member of the Party's
Central Committee from its Fifth National Congress in 1927 onwards. He was
elected to the Political Bureau at the Fourth Plenary Session of the Sixth
Central Committee in 1931. In 1933 he served as secretary of the Provincial
Party Committee of the Hunan-Kiangsi Border Area and concurrently as political
commissar of the Sixth Army Group of the Red Army. When the Sixth and Second
Army Groups joined forces and formed the Second Front Army, he was appointed
its political commissar. He was Director of the General Political Department
of the Eighth Route Army in the first years of the War of Resistance. In
1940 he began to serve in the Secretariat of the Party's Central Committee.
At the First Plenary Session of the Seventh Central Committee in 1945 he
was again elected a member of the Political Bureau and of the Secretariat.
Comrade Jen Pi-shih died in Peking on October 27, 1950.

19. The Sixth Army Group of the Chinese Workers' and Peasants'
Red Army, originally stationed in the Hunan-Kiangsi border area, broke through
the enemy's siege and shifted its position in August 1934 on the orders of
the Party's Central Committee. In October it joined forces with the Second
Army Group led by Comrade Ho Lung in eastern Kweichow, and together they
formed the Second Front Army of the Red Army and created the
Hunan-Hupeh-Szechuan-Kweichow revolutionary base area.

20. In October 1934 the First Third and Fifth Army Groups
of the Chinese Workers' and Peasants' Red Army (that is, the First Front
Army of the Red Army, also known as the Central Red Army) set out from Changting
and Ninghua in western Fukien and from Juichin, Yutu and other places in
southern Kiangsi and started a major strategic movement. In traversing the
eleven provinces of Fukien, Kiangsi, Kwangtung, Hunan, Kwangsi, Kweichow,
Szechuan, Yunnan, Sikang, Kansu and Shensi, crossing perpetually snow-capped
mountains and trackless grasslands, sustaining untold hardships and frustrating
the enemy's repeated encirclements, pursuits, obstructions and interceptions,
the Red Army covered 25,000 li (12,500 kilometres) on this march
and finally arrived triumphantly at the revolutionary base area in northern
Shensi in October 1935.

21. The Red Army in the Szechuan-Shensi border area was
the Fourth Front Army of the Chinese Workers' and Peasants' Red Army. In
March 1935, it shifted from its base in the Szechuan-Shensi border area to
the borders of Szechuan and Sikang Provinces. In June, it joined forces with
the First Front Army in Maokung in western Szechuan and advanced northward
by two routes, a right route and a left route. But on arriving in the Maoerhkai
area near Sungpan in September, Chang Kuo-tao of the Fourth Front Army led
the troops on the left route in a southward direction, in defiance of the
Central Committee's orders, thus causing a disruption in the Red Army. The
Second Front Army, which had broken through the enemy's siege and left the
Hunan-Hupeh-Szechuan-Kweichow border area, arrived at Kantze, Sikang Province,
in June 1936 via Hunan, Kweichow and Yunnan, and there it joined forces with
the Fourth Front Army. Acting against Chang Kuo-tao's wishes, the comrades
in the Fourth Front Army resumed the shift northward together with the Second
Front Army. In October, the entire Second Front Army and a part of the Fourth
Front Army arrived in northern Shensi and succeeded in joining forces with
the First Front Army.

22. Chang Kuo-tao was a renegade from the Chinese revolution.
Speculating on the revolution, he joined the Chinese Communist Party in his
youth. In the Party he made many mistakes and ended by committing grave crimes.
Most notoriously, in 1935 he opposed the Red Army's northward march, advocating
a defeatist and liquidationist withdrawal by the Red Army to the
minority-nationality areas on the Szechuan-Sikang border, and he engaged
in openly traitorous activities against the Party and the Central Committee,
established his own bogus central committee, disrupted the unity of the Party
and the Red Army, and caused heavy losses to its Fourth Front Army. Thanks
to patient education by Comrade Mao Tse-tung and the Central Committee, the
Fourth Front Army and its numerous cadres soon came back under the correct
leadership of the Central Committee and played an honourable part in subsequent
struggles. Chang Kuo-tao, however, proved incorrigible, escaped by himself
from the Shensi-Kansu-Ningsia Border Region in the spring of 1938 and joined
the Kuomintang secret police.

23. The Central Red Army, or the First Front Army, refers
to the Red Army that was built up in the Kiangsi-Fukien area directly under
the leadership of the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party.

24. Pan Ku, according to Chinese mythology, was the creator
of the world and the first ruler of mankind. The Three Sovereigns and Five
Emperors were legendary rulers in ancient China.

25. In July 1935, the Kuomintang troops started their
third "encirclement and suppression" campaign against the Shensi-Kansu
revolutionary base area. The 26th Army Corps of the Northern Shensi Red Army
routed two enemy brigades in the eastern sector and drove the enemy to the
east of the Yellow River. In September, the 25th Army Corps of the Red Army,
which had been operating in the Hupeh-Honan-Anhwei base area, joined forces
with the Northern Shensi Red Army after arriving in northern Shensi via southern
Shensi and eastern Kansu, and together they formed the 15th Army Group of
the Red Army. In the Kanchuan-Laoshan campaign, this army group wiped out
most of the enemy 110th Division, killed its divisional commander and in
a subsequent action destroyed four battalions of the enemy's 107th Division
at Yulinchiao, Kanchuan County. The enemy organized new attacks and put Tung
Ying-pin (an army corps commander of the Northeastern Army) in command of
five divisions, which mounted an attack along two routes; the division on
the east route drove northward by way of Lochuan and Fuhsien and the other
four divisions on the west route drove along the Hulu River towards Fuhsien
northern Shensi, via Chingyang and Hoshui in Kansu. By October, the Central
Red Army reached northern Shensi. In the following month the Central Red
Army and the 15th Army Group jointly wiped out the enemy's 109th Division
in Chihlochen, southwest of Fuhsien, and eliminated one regiment of the enemy's
106th Division at Heishuisze in the course of pursuit. Thus the enemy's third
"encirclement and suppression" campaign against the Shensi-Kansu border area
was completely smashed.

26. When the main forces of the Red Army in southern China
shifted position during 1934-35, they left behind some units to operate as
guerrillas. These guerrilla units held out in the following fourteen base
areas in eight provinces: southern Chekiang, northern Fukien, eastern Fukien,
southern Fukien, western Fukien, northeastern Kiangsi, the Fukien-Kiangsi
border, the Kwangtung-Kiangsi border, southern Hunan, the Hunan-Kiangsi border,
the Hunan-Hupeh-Kiangsi border, the Hupeh-Honan-Anhwei border, the Tungpai
Mountains in southern Honan and Hainan Island off the coast of Kwangtung.

27. After the Japanese imperialists occupied the Northeast
in 1931, the Chinese Communist Party called upon the people to put up armed
resistance. It organized anti-Japanese guerrilla units, formed the Northeastern
People's Revolutionary Army and rendered assistance to various volunteer
forces fighting the enemy. In 1934, under the leadership of the Party, all
these forces were reorganized into the single Northeast Anti-Japanese United
Army, with the outstanding Communist Yang Ching-yu as Commander-in-Chief.
This army kept up anti-Japanese guerrilla war in the Northeast for a long
time. The anti-Japanese guerrilla war in eastern Hopei refers to the peasant
uprising against Japan there in May 1935.

28. The revolutionary war led by the Communist Party of
the Soviet Union refers to the fighting from 1918 to 1920 in which the Soviet
people beat off armed intervention by Britain, the United States, France,
Japan, Poland, etc., and suppressed the White Guard rebellion.

29. The political power and the policies of a people's
republic, as here enunciated by Comrade Mao Tse-tung, were made a reality
in the people's Liberated Areas under the leadership of the Communist Party
during the War of Resistance. That was why the Party was able to lead the
people behind the enemy lines in waging a victorious war against the Japanese
invaders. After Japan's surrender, the Third Revolutionary Civil War broke
out. As the war went on, the area liberated by the people gradually extended
to the whole of China, and in this way the unified People's Republic of China
was born. Thus Comrade Mao Tse-tung's ideal of a people's republic was eventually
realized throughout the country.

30. The Sixth National Congress of the Communist Party
of China held in July 1928 adopted the following Ten-Point Programme: (1)
overthrow imperialist rule; (2) confiscate foreign capitalist enterprises
and banks; (3) unify China and recognize the right of the nationalities to
self-determination; (4) overthrow the Kuomintang warlord government; (5)
establish a government of councils of workers, peasants and soldiers; (6)
institute the eight-hour day, increase wages, and establish unemployment
relief and social insurance, (7) confiscate the land of all landlords and
distribute the land among the peasants. (8) improve the living conditions
of thesoldiers, give land and jobs to ex-soldiers; (9)
abolish all exorbitant taxes andmiscellaneous levies and
adopt a consolidated progressive tax; and (10) unite with the world proletariat,
unite with the Soviet Union.

31. Originally an anti-Leninist faction in the Russian
working-class movement, the Trotskyite group later degenerated into a downright
counter-revolutionary gang. In his report to the plenary session of the Central
Committee of the C.P.S.U. (B.) in 1937, Comrade Stalin explained the course
this group of renegades had run as follows:

In the past, seven or eight years ago, Trotskyism was one of such
politicaltrends in the working class, an anti-Leninist
trend, it is true, and therefore profoundly mistaken, but nevertheless a
political trend.... Present-day Trotskyism is not a political trend in the
working class, but a gang without principle and without ideas, of wreckers
and diversionists, intelligence service agents, spies, murderers, a gang
of sworn enemies of the working class, working in the pay of the intelligence
services of foreign states.

After the failure of the Chinese revolution in 1927, a small number of
Trotskyites appeared in China, too. Ganging up with Chen Tu-hsiu and other
renegades, they formed a small counter-revolutionary clique in 1929 and spread
such counterrevolutionary propaganda as that the Kuomintang had already completed
the bourgeois-democratic revolution, and they became a dirty imperialist
and Kuomintang instrument against the people. The Chinese Trotskyites shamelessly
joined the Kuomintang secret service. After the September 18th Incident,
to fulfil the order given by the criminal renegade Trotsky "not to impede
the occupation of China by imperial Japan", they began collaborating with
Japanese secret agents, received subsidies from them and engaged in all kinds
of activities facilitating Japanese aggression.

32. This quotation is from Mencius. Mencius made
this remark because in the period known as the Spring and Autumn Era (722-481
B.C.) the feudal princes of China incessantly fought one another for power.

33. Faced with the opposition of the Chinese people to
her traffic in opium, Britain sent forces in 1840-42 to invade Kwangtung
and other coastal regions of China, under the pretext of protecting trade.
Led by Lin Tse-hsu, the troops in Kwangtung fought a war of resistance. A
"Quell-the-British Corps" which was spontaneously organized by the people
of Canton also dealt the British aggressors severe blows.

34. The War of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom was a peasant
revolutionary war in the middle of the 19th century against the feudal rule
and national oppression of the Ching Dynasty. In January 1851 Hung Hsiu-chuan,
Yang Hsiu-ching and other leaders of this revolution staged an uprising in
Chintien Village of Kueiping County in Kwangsi and proclaimed the founding
of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom. In 1852 the peasant army, proceeding northward
from Kwangsi, marched through Hunan, Hupeh, Kiangsi and Anhwei and in 1853
captured Nanking, the main city on the lower Yangtse. A part of the forces
then continued the drive north and pushed to the vicinity of Tientsin. However,
the Taiping army failed to build stable base areas in the places it occupied,
and also, after establishing its capital in Nanking, the leading group in
the army committed many political and military errors; therefore it could
not withstand the combined onslaught of the counter-revolutionary forces
of the Ching government and of the British, U.S. and French aggressors, and
it was finally defeated in 1864.

35. The Yi Ho Tuan War was the vast spontaneous movement
of the peasants and handicraftsmen in northern China in 1900. Forming themselves
into mystical secret societies, these peasants and handicraftsmen carried
on armed struggle against the imperialists. But the movement was put down
with indescribable savagery, and Peking and Tientsin were occupied by the
joint forces of eight imperialist powers.

36. For the Revolution of 1911, see "Report on an
Investigation of the Peasant Movement in Hunan", Note 3, p. 56 of this volume.

37. See V. I. Lenin, "The War Programme of the Proletarian
Revolution", Collected Works, Russ. ea., Moscow, 1950, Vol. XXIII.
See also History of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (Bolsheviks),
Short Course, Chapter 6, Section 3.